The Passionate Mistake by Amelia Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

won.
     
     
    There was a confidentiality contract of a dozen pages to sign. She read it carefully like she intended to obey it, then signed her false name with reckless abandon. Mike left his PA running the competition and took an hour to guide her through the protocols of this ivory tower: that no data could go in or out without Hamish’s permission, no one other than Mike and the Platform Division had access to the suite, she could create enhancements on any software on the servers so long as the original file remained intact and archived.
    He introduced her to the current running projects and the buzzing in her ears made it almost impossible to take it in. Between the thrill of the moment, the nervous tension and the way she kept zoning out staring into his dark eyes – that turned out on closer examination to be a very deep slate blue – she wasn’t managing to maintain focus. But she nodded anyway and tried to look appropriately serious and sober about it rather than fizzing with excitement.
    Go away, she chanted silently. Go away with your big, distracting body leaning over me and your broad hands on the keyboard , that I keep imagining somewhere else. Go away and leave me here with this treasure. Leave me alone to marinate in it. She quivered with the lust to see it, to see the source code on which this company and everything it built was made, her fingers flexing hungrily in her lap. Go away go away go away so I can think straight, so I can be alone with it. Go away.
    And finally he went, with a nod and a secret smile that said he saw more of her than she wanted and understood more than she would ever choose to share.
    It didn’t matter right now. Nothing mattered but this. The code. Oh, the beautiful, beautiful code.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
     
    She was very focused. Driven, even. She would work for hour after hour, hunched over the keyboard as she was now.
    It couldn’t be good for her back. He would get one of the ergonomics specialists to come in and give her some guidance. Though whether she’d take it or not was anyone’s guess. She was so stubborn and . . . well . . . suspicious would probably be the right word. As if everything was some test she must pass, and if she showed a sign of weakness it was instant failure. He guessed life had given her some harsh teachers.
    Not that he expected her to open up and tell him about it, of course. She wasn’t the type.
    He did like her passion, though. She gave one hundred percent, no slacking. And she was brilliant of course; a real asset to the company.
    He wondered how she’d polish up, given a generous work environment and enough time to relax into it. While she was like this – wary, defensive and full-bore ego – she wouldn’t mix well with clients. Or with other team members, really.
    Some close supervision, a little mentoring, and she could change completely. He’d seen it before. She was so young. Her every interaction was a shot fired from behind the parapets. There might be a real softy lurking within.
    No pushover, though.
    Yeah, he liked her guts.
    The thing that horrified him more than a little was how he found himself watching her; Watching not only her work, but her . It made him uncomfortable to admit it, but she fascinated him. There was a grace in how she moved, a dynamic energy he found very attractive. She was restless and quicksilver. Only programming kept her rooted to one spot.
    Which was all very well if he was dispassionately admiring the physical beauty of another person. But he wasn’t. He was watching her as a man watches a woman. She made him hungry. And that was not appropriate in the workplace, and certainly, most certainly not with someone as young as she.
    When he watched her stride through the atrium – and he had an excellent view from the upper storey above, sitting at the desk in his office – he squirmed to think about the fantasies he’d had of this young woman. From that distance, contours hidden under